Preferably water soluble. Best putty? I tried Squadron and Perfect Putty. PP is too grainy, not fine enough.
NOT water soluble, but absolutely the best putty for models, bar none: Bondo automotive spot putty. The red stuff in the tube. $10 for a 10 year supply, doesn’t shrink, sticks to plastic, resin, and metal, sands glass smooth, creamy enough to be forced into small cracks and strong enough to be built into door edges. I’ve tried all the dedicated putties including the new ones and I’ve been using Bondo for 3 decades.
If you want a no-sand putty, get true-earth.com Waterfiller Putty. You paint it on into your seam lines or whatever you want to fill, wait 30 minutes, then wipe away all the excess putty with a cotton swab moistened with alcohol. You get a perfect surface with no sanding.
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One of my friends who’s a true master modeler like @SSGToms said the exact 
percent samething about
I definitely need to get a tube of Bondo Spot Putty and try the True Earth. Looks like I have to do shopping 
again.
With that said, based on my personal pet favorite used for ~25 years is Molak Stucco Putty. It will thin like paint with with a good liquid cement like Testor’s or Tamiya. One can build up an edge with it if needed but is a slow process. Easily best hobby band putty I’ve used. It’s also fairly hard to find these days.
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Perfect Plastic Putty is my go-to water soluble, no-sand putty. Put it on, and smooth / clean it up with a moistened cotton swab.
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Me to ,Perfect Plastic Putty for water soluble,not Water soluble depend,Mr dissolved putty or Mr surfacer 500 for very small gaps,big gaps Styrene,epoxy,a putty a good friend give to me in a plastic tub,he use at work for cars it’s gray but i dont know the name,its soo good,probably a Aussie version of bondo
never had any issues with Perfect Putty being to grainy…did you add a drop or two of water and then stir it in, I sometimes do thay and it works fine for me.
I think Putty depends on what you need it for. Vallejo Plastic Putty is good for small jobs and can be dissolved in water. Mr.Hobby products are good too but require their thinner to dissolve. They also make a ready-made dissolved putty as @Vicious already said, Mr. Dissolved Putty.
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My vote goes to Tamiya Basic Type Putty. Very fine, sands well. Just use some ventilation because the smell is quite strong.
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That’s the stuff, Doug. Best modeling putty on the planet.
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First putty I ever used. Shep Paine used it when he converted a Shenyrman three piece tranny cover to a cast one. So, following the insert as best as I could, I did the same.
However, there are different putties for different applications. When converting figures, I like to shave off slivers of sprue that the figure came on. I insert them into gaps created by re-posing arms and legs, or into the saw kerfs. Then I add liquid cement and tease the whole mess into shape with a toothpick. When it’s done you can’t even tell there was a joint there.
Similarly I used strtched sprue from the same kit when filling holes. When you stretch sprue you always get two tapered pieces on either end. I forcefully insert them into the hole with cement. Let cure, shave with chisel blade, done. So shrinking, no sanding, no mess.
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I really should do that more instead of using putty and hoping it doesn’t get poked out.
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Conic sections of stretched sprue, mushroom joints, plastic discs, and sprue goo are certainly useful, perhaps even best practice, but a good putty will solve a lot of problems.
Milliput is great for big jobs but consistently pops out of ejector pin holes and seams.
In my experience, two part epoxy is really strong but hard to use and wasteful. Squadron and Testors type putties dry out, crack, and even pop out. These are the putties I want to replace.
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That’s just one of the things that’s great about the Bondo putty. It has acetone in it, so it chemically bonds with plastic. The only way to get it off is to sand it off.
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It probably will, but I can’t remember the last time I used any. My other preferred filler is CA - it stays where you put it, sets instantly with accelerator, doesn’t shrink, and sands glass smooth.
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@SSGToms Over the last 36 hours I used the Bondo on a set of AFV Club tracks and a Revell M48A2CG. It dries very fast and sands easily. So far, it has not popped out of shallow ejector pin holes or sink marks and seems very promising. (In my experience, ejector pin marks in tracks are perhaps the hardest and most time consuming thing to reliably fill.)
@18bravo My experiments with super glue went really badly. That was quite a while back, but I remember having serious issues with voids, it being very hard to sand, and the bottle turning into a brick after a small number of uses. Those problems may have resulted from using the wrong super glue, applying it incorrectly, or who knows what.
In my experience with model building, no ‘easy’ solution is ever actually easy. There is a horrible trial and error period associated with every product, every technique, and every tool. Books and videos do not help because they leave out critical information. The whole hobby is one gigantic mine field.
Bondo did leave some voids because it dries very quickly and I was filling dozens of ejector pin marks at a time. Now that I know it is acetone based, I can probably use that to extend the work time. I have not yet primed anything to see if it really worked. Only time will tell of it cracks or otherwise misbehaves.
Styrene may be the best filler but it can be really hard to use. I do not own a high end punch set for making discs. Sprue goo takes a very long time to dry.
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Depending on which type of track it is, I don’t fill in the ejector pin marks. Often they’re on the inner rubber pads, which wear just like the outer ones. I just sand them smooth. It’s a time saver. You can always make more money, get a new girlfriend, but time - you never get that back.
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I picked up the Bondo stuff around a year ago. Went to use it recently, & found the plastic cap insert broke, & the tube dried to unusable. I think I spent $14 on it.
I picked up some Gunze Sangyo plastic filler. It’s less grainy. I’m using it on a Border M4A1.We’ll see how it goes…
Damon.
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Putty is something of a skill I need to acquire. I started with Squadrons green stuff decades ago and haven’t progressed much beyond that. It seems putty like paint has a lot of variations between brands and how to manipulate the different putties for specific applications. I have tried Bondo and I like it. I have tried milliput and it was OK. The Bondo works for me in most applications. I haven’t tried thinning it. So some tutorials would be nice. What I am after is a putty that I can apply on aircraft models where the wing and fuselage meet or where the fuselage halves meet that will not need sanding. The rescribing of panel lines and rivets is a skill I have not mastered yet. Maybe a waterbased putty and a damp Q tip or paper would work.
I think Wades work making Zimm is masterful. I am still waiting on a tutorial for that (hint).
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It first start with how large the seam is. This is where sanding and test fitting can fix many of the larger issues. Plastic shims can also help. I would tap off areas close by that you don’t putty to fill. On my Meng Whippet I used Vallejo plastic putty to fill the seams with a moist q-tip to wipe away the excess. It’s not a heavy duty putty so apply last before painting.
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